Our day began early with breakfast at our Tokyo hotel before making our way to Tokyo Station to catch the bullet train to Osaka. We were hoping to capture Mt. Fuji during the journey, but the mountain was stubbornly hidden behind clouds, leaving us with less than impressive photos.
Once we arrived in Osaka, we took a beautiful walk around Osaka Castle and the surrounding park. The scenery was perfect for our first taste of the city. We made our first stop at Starbucks to add to the mug collection, which has become a fun travel tradition for us. While walking around the castle we also managed to see two people walking some meerkats. When I crouched down to capture some photos one of them ran up to me and took shelter under me and allowed me to pet it while everyone crowded around. Eventually the other owner brought over the other meerkat and he allowed me to hold it, which was a lot of fun and entirely unexpected.
For our evening adventure, we took the train down to Universal Studios Japan to see what unique mugs they might have. We struck gold and found a special Spring collection in the same style as our other mugs, but in different colors and packaging. These mugs are from the previous generation “Been There” series, specifically part of the “Across the Globe” Spring collection, making them a perfect find, even if Universal Studios didn’t have their own mug. Ryan did manage to get some great candid shots of me with my camera and attempting to win prizes from several claw machines along the way.
The photos in this album capture all these spontaneous moments from our phones as we traveled from Tokyo to Osaka and explored our first day.